The present invention relates to a flooring system that utilizes individual adhesive units as fasteners for attaching floor tiles together to create a floating floorcovering article. Individual adhesive units as fasteners provide the ideal solution to the problem of chemical adhesive materials that are harmful to floor surfaces and the environment. Conventional carpet tiles and vinyl floor tiles are often adhered to a flooring surface using these types of chemical adhesive compositions. Chemical adhesive compositions fail to allow the floor tiles any amount of shifting as one unit because they are individually attached to the floor and are typically not attached to one another. In contrast, with the use of individual adhesive units as fasteners, the floor tiles of the present invention are adhered and/or attached to one another rather than to the flooring surface. Thus, the present invention provides a floor tile-to-floor tile (e.g. carpet tile-to-carpet tile) adhesive system for floorcovering articles, while the prior art provided floor tile-to-flooring surface adhesive methods.
Contrary to conventional methods for installing floor tiles (such as carpet tile and/or vinyl tile), it has been discovered that under certain circumstances it is desirable to allow the series of floor tile to move together as if it were a single floorcovering article (such as broadloom carpet, in the case of carpet tiles). It is further advantageous to eliminate the use of traditional adhesive compositions which have historically been used to adhere floor tiles to a flooring surface. Thus, the use of individual adhesive units as fasteners for attaching floor tiles together provides an advantage over the prior art.